Your Workplace

Employer support will be beneficial to successfully continuing breastfeeding. Discuss your plan to continue to breastfeed, and your need to pump/express breast milk during the workday, with your employer when you are pregnant or before you return to work.
 
Be sure your employer understands that continued breastfeeding, and providing your milk by pumping at work, are not just good for your baby - they also are good for the company. Evidence indicates that employer support for continued breastfeeding, and the breast-pumping breaks it requires, results in fewer employee absences and increased worker productivity. This makes sense when you consider that:

• your breastfed, or breast milk-fed, baby is less likely to develop many kinds of infectious illnesses, so you are less likely to take days off to care for a sick baby.
  
  
• you are less likely to be distracted on the job because you had to leave a sick baby with a sitter or because you are concerned about milk production or some other breastfeeding-related issue.
  
  
• if you are able to pump every few hours, you are less likely to develop a mastitis (breast infection) - a situation that may require that you take one or more days off work.

Let your employer know that frequent workday breast-pumping breaks do not continue indefinitely. The number will decrease during the second half of your baby's first year, as he/she develops and eats more solid foods.
 
Other work place issues to consider might include the following:

• Will you be able to take breast-pumping breaks close to your baby's feeding schedule or must pumping wait for scheduled work-site breaks and lunch periods?
  
  
• Is there a place where you may go to pump or express your breast milk privately?
  
  
• Is there a refrigerator to store breast milk in during the day, or do you need to bring an insulated cooler for storage?

The information on this Web page is provided for educational purposes. You understand and agree that this information is not intended to be, and should not be used as, a substitute for medical treatment by a health care professional. You agree that Lucile Salter Packard Children's Hospital is not making a diagnosis of your condition or a recommendation about the course of treatment for your particular circumstances through the use of this Web page. You agree to be solely responsible for your use of this Web page and the information contained on this page. Lucile Salter Packard Children's Hospital, its officers, directors, employees, agents, and information providers shall not be liable for any damages you may suffer or cause through your use of this page even if advised of the possibility of such damages.